Conciliatory Conversation On gender

[FairAdvocate]

Hello!

In the last few months I have been reflecting on the transgender and feminism debate and I feel I've got a few things to share with you on it from a perspective perhaps you wont maybe often hear.

To preface and explain, I am a transgender woman/female and I'm writing here today not to create any kind of argument or discord but because I am here to say that I think there are things that my side of the floor has gotten wrong.

I want to start from a position of saying that I can understand why some of you feel erased or afraid. I dont say that in a patronising way; I say that from a position of being fully periceved as female in society and I often to feel quite vunerable because of that in certain situations just like I imagine many of you do aswell.

I started down this road from hearing about how a 'A woman is person who says they are a woman'. I must admit I never quite got it. It makes no sense but yet, there are many transgender people and allies who say this like it has any kind of meaning. Just like when they also say that 'woman' is defined by a certain set of catagories etc. Its always bothered me and I didnt know why. For me, the more I have medically tranisitioned to female, the more Ive began to understand the word and defintion of female cannot be just removed from the term woman.

Now, I suspect this is where most of you reading this will be in decent agreement of. However I suspect what I say next will cause more issues. I believe myself to be female not just because of my physical aspect having been changed through medical transition (albeit its not a perfect process) but also because I believe my brain structure to have formed female in the sex differences between male and female likely at birth. There are quite numerous studies that do back this up to an okay but emerging degree and I am also aware that there also a few that dont say that exactly but say my brain formed in a kind of third way. Either way, I think it is clear from these studies that my brain developed differently to that of a male and it has manifested itself so I am quite closely alligned with being female.

To me, I feel like this makes a me kind of intersex person but perhaps in a different kind of way than we usually think of the term intersex. Though, through my medical transition obviously estrogen has, at least for me, solidified my mind to that much more towards female.

With this in mind, I find myself looking at the world as a woman but a woman who came with unique challenges and hurdles that are difficult to explain. For example, often I have been accused of saying its wrong that GRS gives me a vagina and have often been shouted at and saying im just sexualising it. However for me, the vagina isnt and wasnt the main source of my distress. The main source of my distress is that I will never have ovaries and will never have children and be a biological mother. I have never been interested in having a child as a male in anyway.

For me, it reminds me that I am not just a straight forward female and many will not accept me. After some deep reflection I think that I have also accepted that I will have to go through hurdles and I will have to remove my male form in such a succfient manner that I can be accepted by other women in certain areas. With that in mind I have also come to accept that self indentifcation shouldnlt be accepted. That tears at me because I wish I lived in that ideal world. But, as a woman who is only attracted to men, I understand frankly just how dangerous some of them can be. But ive come to the conclusion that if we keep pushing for this we are only making it harder for everyone and it will only lead to further division, more toxicity and we will just tear oursevles apart.

I do look at my rights from five years ago and I look at them now and see how they have reduced from prisons putting people such as as me in mens prisions, to the recent SC ruling, sports associations banning us. I do truly think that most women do and have historically accepted women like me but I also understand that came with agreements and understandings. Understandings which I think have been overstepped in the last ten years.

While I dont and will never accept calling me a man; I can understand why some of you that are reading this may have gotten fed up and stopped caring. I suppose what I am really trying to say is, can we all start again? If I can accept that women (including myself) need protections in some areas and I can accept the need for medicalising, the dropping of self identification, the need for due process in changing your sex legally can you accept that Im not a man? Can you accept that calling me certain things and the misgendering, using terms such as Trans identified Male is actually causing more harm than it is good?

Can we not as women actually just get our heads together and work out a decent solution? I do believe we might remain with some differences. For example I do believe a woman is a person who was born with a female gender identity by which I mean the overall average structure of the brain and therefore mind. And I do understand you will use a defintion to be defined by your anatomy. But I do believe that actually both of these can be true. While I cant be 100 percent true to your defintion I have tried to be because of where my defintion has led me and I understand how difficult that may be for someone who has all the correct anatomy to understand. But I have tried to understand how you feel so I am trying to ask for the same.

Finally, thank you for reading my long message. I am very nervous to be leaving it. Please can I ask you from refraining to calling me names and refering to me as a man, this is a request and not a demand. I have very much put myself out there with this and I hope that what is reflected back to me is the same spirit in which I wrote this.

Thank you

P.s I hovered over the 'Post' button for about five minutes before clicking it.

There has also been intense threat of violence to trans community on opposition protests. Anyone from either ‘side’ behaving this way is of course appalling.

I’m asking for data / studies etc that show trans women’s increasing threat to women today. Trans women have been around for centuries.

Rape, online misogyny, abortion laws are all principally targeted towards people with female bodies. These things are precisely the reason why it's so important to keep on defining "woman" as "adult female human", because it's our bodies, not our psychological identities, that are the primary basis of structural oppression.

@Littlebutloudwe don’t need to prove that some men aren’t men. You know, working in the women’s sector, that men pose a far greater risk of violence, especially sexual violence. So what evidence do you have that this group of men poses less risk?

This is the single crucial point which overrides everything else in this debate. Our oppression is sex-based.

Really? Can you provide any examples of feminists making threats of violence against trans people? Literally, any at all?

Please stop both sidesing this unless you have actual evidence that both sides are doing it.

No, it isn’t a “both sides” issue. Women are not violent to these men in the way that some of them fantasise about extreme violence to us.

I find it deeply troubling that so many organisations and people in the women's sector are so captured.

This is how we have ended up with all these rape crisis organisations unwilling to help women who need single sex care.

Me too. It’s appalling.

@MrsSkylerWhite said: Arguably, stepping back from protest and participating in the war, taking on traditional men’s roles and demonstrating just how vital women were probably did just as much, if not more, more to achieve the vote for women than protest.

Were they thanked or rewarded? Was it not several years after the war before Universal Suffrage was granted?
After WW1 and WW2 many women were turfed out of their jobs for home coming soldiers.

I think part of the problem here, and we can see it in this thread, is that even if the law changed tomorrow to be TWAW, that still doesn't mean people would actually BELIEVE it - and that's unacceptable to OP. What's happening now is that the people who felt like they had to go along with it did so out of fear of social repercussions, risks to employment, and so on, but didn't ACTUALLY believe that people could change sex are feeling empowered to say so. OP is upset that they are being called a man on this thread, but even if they weren't, that doesn't change the fact that the posters who have said it believe it. So what is the answer? You can't legislate belief.

The rights of disabled people are certainly not prioritised the way trans people's rights are, even though being disabled is not a choice. You'll get no argument from me there.

Women shouldn't have had to prove that they were as valid as men in order to gain the right to vote. And the only reason these roles were considered "traditionally men's roles" is because of the patriarchy in the first place.

If women sit meekly by and wait for our rights to be prioritised, that day never comes. We will never, ever get to the top of the list of people whose needs should be considered.

That's why the reaction to the Supreme Court judgment has been so huge.

It hasn't legitimised transphobia. Women just feel seen, that's all.

Here’s a good thread. If anyone would like to have a read and explain why women should ever have had to put up with any of this shit be my guest. Hopefully the “gender” train is coming off the rails.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5318700-memories-of-the-last-few-years-of-madness?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=app_share

I know. The fact the things I am saying are being labelled as “disgusting” when they are things every adopter, irrespective of gender ID, needs to hear is troubling.

Nothing to add, you've said it better than I could - just quoting you to agree wholeheartedly.

I’m so saddened by the hostility and unpleasantness directed towards the OP on what is a very considered and moderate post. I’m just a normal older woman who has her own views on this issue.
We had trans women years ago. They tended to go to Casablanca for reassignment surgery and there were very few of them, the only two I had heard of were April Ashley and Tula (?) the model. Later on there was Jan Morris. I followed the writing of Diana Weston(?-I’m bad at names) in The Guardian,and hoped all would go well for her. I think the point is that these trans women were accepted because they had had full surgery and whatever the ideology was as far as zI was concerned I was happy to fully accept them as women from a practical point of view.
Fast forward a bit and we had people with penises and beards who wanted me to accept they were women, and who proved they were not by their attitude to sport, rape crisis centres etc. That is where the need to take a firm stand comes from, you cannot be accepted as associate woman if you have a penis, full stop.
I understand the mindset point the OP makes, how you live forms your thought processes -retirement has taught me that.
So, I have a lot of sympathy for the points the OP makes. If this issue is not resolved there will soon be a case where some vulnerable trans woman who in no way looks like a man ends up in a male jail with tragic results. Just imagine this was someone like the poor Brianna girl who was murdered.
Once again it is a certain type of strident aggressive male who is causing the problem here and while that is now being firmly stopped (I hope) I want there to be respect for people in O P’s situation and some constructive support, rather than this unpleasant gloating.

I said this before, please do and argue women don't have human rights.

The GRA was made in response to a person who wanted to get married to someone of the same sex. However, the consequences for women, whilst noted, were ignored but became reality.

Going back to the ECHR will be interesting because even they have noted that rights should not conflict on other groups rights and rights can be restricted.

So please go back. Just don't be surprised if the answer is the same: gender doesn't matter when it comes to rights based on sex

You should read what Jan Morris’ daughter thought.

@FairAdvocate I am an adoptive mother of two. Nothing @Barbadosgirl said was disgusting. It’s a tough old road adoption. You go through months and months of intrusive questioning, months possibly years of jumping through hoops. Before approval, you will have to discuss with your social worker everything….and I mean everything. Ex partners from decades ago will be contacted, ex employers, family and friends, your medical history examined…nothing is off limits and rightly so. That’s even before you are approved. Identity is a big topic with adoptive children with huge feelings attached to it, You will have to talk about your transition and your own identity in great detail with your social worker. if you think what @Barbadosgirl said was offensive - then you will need to work on thickening your skin.

My kids are great, but we’ve not hit teenage hood yet. I envisage many ‘Eastender’ like scenes playing out. ‘You’re not my real mother’. My ten year old and I already laugh about this scenario together - because the other thing you need to be as an adoptive parent is honest and I mean, brutally honest. You can’t afford for your kids to think that you lie.

If you’re buried after you die and in future someone digs up your skeleton they’ll know you were a man. Your lady brain will be gone. Your bones have always been and will always be male.

OP has been laughing about holocaust victims, whilst trying to use them as a gotcha.

It seems perfectly congruent to me.

You are a transwoman. Not a cis man. But not a female, either.

No one is entitled to all spaces.

really fully seen as female or are the women too scared to tell you otherwise ?

There is NO FUCKING FEMALE BRAIN

amd the amount of harm done to women by that myth is unmeasureable

why was I bullied for liking maths? Because the female brain isn’t capable of doing maths apparently

why were women not allowed to vote? Because their brains were considered incapable of understanding

why are men preferred in business ? Because spills still believe they have better business heads?

why did people act shocked when I turned up at meetings? Because I was in tech and they didn’t expect this person everyone raved about was female

evil men have spent decades looking for the evidence of the female brain and failed completely

so there you go - you don’t have a female brain because you have a male DNA throughout every cell in your body

now perhaps you would like to look at what you hav written from a women’s point of view - oh but I guess you might find that impossible ?

I will just preface this by saying I understand that you are trying to be polite and civil, and that you are sincere. I believe that you are coming from a place of 'good faith' in this discussion, i.e. not being deliberately deceitful, manipulative, contrived or insincere.

I thought for a very long time about what makes me a woman. How can I be a woman? I never resonated with 'because I feel I am one'.

And yet the subsequent paragraphs you wrote don't amount to anything more than 'because I feel I am one'.

I’m so saddened by the hostility and unpleasantness directed towards the OP on what is a very considered and moderate post.

And I am fed up to the back teeth of the deeply offensive misogyny that runs rampant through the OP's purported 'moderate' post(s). That you cannot see that is a mystery to me.

All the Supreme Court has done is clarify the law that enshrines that women are a distinct sex class from men and that women have and are entitled to have rights that do not include men however they may present, whether they have modified themselves surgically, chemically or cosmetically or not and whether they have a GRC or not. Women are human and they have rights. Men, under the auspices of trans/gender identity have launched a full scale assault on those rights with the sole intention of removing them, the Supreme Court has stopped that and about time too. There was never a right for transwomen to access spaces, services and sports that are for women they just barged their way in with claims of entitlement that they never had and threats to those who dared to speak against them.

Posts such as the one from this OP are merely ways to undermine the clearly stated law again, the answer is NO, deal with it.